Hey all,

Have been searching the forums for a while now with no solid results, so I figured I might as well ask.
I've been working on installing front wedges on my 85' which has proved to be a little bit more of a headache than initially expected. So far I've completed what I believe to be around half of the work, with the spring completely removed, wedges glued to the spring, upgraded brackets cut/filed down, etc. As of now, the spring sits in the cross member and the control arms are back on. I read in a writeup of the installation that in order to get the spring to seat evenly in both control arms, it can be tricky and getting both sides at the same time is the ideal way to do so. I expected this would not pose a significant issue as it came out easy enough, but alas, here I am.

How in the world did you guys get the spring to sit nicely in the control arms? My current strategy has been moving the spring further out of one side, jacking it up to have it seat properly, then coming to the other side only to never get it to pop into place, or be too far out to even attempt to fit it in with the ball joint in the way.

I'll be popping out the lower ball joints before I try again, to give myself more clearance and because I have to install new ones anyways. I was going to see how some silicone grease would work to get the rubber to slide into the a-arm easier, if it's just a matter of too much friction and downward pressure. I think I'm rambling now...

Cheers.

 

I have never needed to pull the ball joints just clean and grease the A arm and the spring pad, it should go right in.

-Daniel

 

You don't have to move the spring from side to side. It's bolted to the frame in the middle and is self centring with the lowering blocks you glued on. Tighten the four bolts that hold the spring to frame and reattach each control arm, and no, the control arms do not have to be reinstalled at the same time.

 

hmm.... let me see if I follow. The wedges installed onto the springs are designed to pivot- similar to the original plastic pieces- and will make up for any offset side to side? That itself makes enough sense, so I can definitely see that. When you say bolted to the middle, do you simply mean the brackets? I tried installing the brackets off the bat, but the spring does need to be compressed quite a bit. I assumed it would be easiest to center it on the control arms / have it under tension in some way to have the spring sit closer to the frame enabling me to actually install said bolts and have it tightened up, but I may have this process completely backwards.

May this be a difference between the 85 (early) and later vettes? As I do see you have a 94.

 

Great to hear that. Will be giving it another shot tonight.

 

Technically not directly in the middle, but the metal brackets that attach it to the frame, which are each off center and not in the middle. Either way, bolt that sucker down and install your lower control arms.

 

I think what I did (real hazy memory here so take it with a bag of salt), is get it in the control arm on one side, lift it with a jack on the other, bolt it in the middle, then so the other control arm.

 

makes much more sense. gonna bolt them both in today, thanks for the replies fellas

 

Got everything back together and the car is back to full functionality! (Save for some scraping.)

Centering the spring in the earlier models, in my experience, is not exactly super important because it won't fit in unless it is more or less even on both sides. Compressed one side with the spring seated properly, both sides with a small amount of grease and a good cleaning, bolted all the brackets and hardware in, and did the same to the other side. No problems at all. The spring retaining brackets that hold the rubber bits of the spring were bolted in last, after I had the spring up in the car and a-arms. Took a bit of raising it up but eventually I got them nice and tight against the frame.

Thanks all!

 

Final bit of clarification if there is any brave soul attempting this job on an earlier (maybe only 85?) corvette today.

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...i-missing.html
In this thread here, OP is having trouble with the spring not coming loose from the a-arm. I had the same problem, which I quickly found to be the spring finding a bracket of sorts under the a-arm bolts to hang onto and retain it's tension. The a-arms were under no pressure and could be removed, but the spring would not slide. If you somehow did force the spring to slide out one way or the other, it would be under such immense pressure that I would never want to have to read about the results of such an experiment on our forum.

That's all for me